Seriously, you guys are going to be so sick of me in no time at all. Then again, you can filter it out right?

I’m back on a bit of a #NerdyJourney – that’s right, it’s so darn nerdy that I’ve even gone so far as to create a hashtag for it on Twitter… Don’t ask me why, because I really couldn’t explain it to you, but at least this time I’m not going to bore you with Valerieopolis, which I haven’t even looked at in days. But before we get to all my geeky Minecraft-ing, I really want to share something else with you first.

Maybe it’s that I’m not being critical enough or maybe it’s that I’m simply accepting what I create easier, I uploaded yet ANOTHER YouTube video! Are you excited? I am. It’s been forever and a day since I uploaded a YouTube video and now I’ve uploaded two in the last month. However, I’ve changed all my old videos so that they have a little intro and ending to them and I updated my channel page so everything is all brand new over there.

If you haven’t caught the hint yet, go check it out! Like it, subscribe to it, share it with all your friends – but mostly, let me know what you think! Oh yeah, and here’s the video. Doing a cover of The White Stripes “Fell in Love With a Girl” (and yes, I know what you’re thinking, eventually I willdo an original song – I promise!)

So now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, I’ll carry onto all the other stuff that I did today. Yes, it was Minecraft, but it was still stuff. As I said before, I’ve kind of given up on my other #NerdyJourney world, Valerieopolis. Just click the link if you want to learn more… I’m still doing it and it still exists, it just hasn’t really gone anywhere. Every time I get on it, little things like fill in a block here or there, but nothing that’s changing the way it looks. But The Boyfriend got me very interested in redstone recently and taught me how to do a few things that I didn’t know how to do before and so one night after we experimented with it together…

I created a new creative world for me to go nutty with. It’s kind of taken on a life of it’s own. I didn’t originally go into it with any real plans or concept, but it’s managed to turn into a Lava/Water metropolis. I mean, the sidewalk pretty much sums it up:

The central focus of this world, which I still haven’t named (so bear with me), is the Town Hall – although I guess it would be more appropriate to call it a City Hall, since that’s more what we’re working with. Here’s a couple of shots of what it looks like:

Town Hall – Ground Level

Town Hall

Town Hall Sitting Area

Aerial View of Town Hall

1st Level from Entrance

1st Level – Town Hall – Water Fountain

1st Level – Town Hall – Lava Fountain

3rd Level – Town Hall

Open Security Gate – Parking Lot – Town Hall

Closed Security Gate – Parking Lot – Town Hall

There’s a couple more buildings, which you can see by checking out my Random Minecraft album on Facebook, but really quickly, I want to show you my Fire Truck. It took forever and a day to figure out how to make it and then I had everyone telling me how I should make it, but of course, I didn’t like the way that they wanted it. So this is essentially what we all came up with. We’ve seen a few tutorials that were really good but I hadn’t watched any of them recently, so couldn’t remember a single thing. However, I do think my dispenser idea is awesome!

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So that’s what I’ve been up to lately… Spent the day after I was incredibly sick on Minecraft and spend the night after working on YouTube. Tomorrow, I have a butt load of things to do – I’m not even slightly looking forward to it. But it’s gotta get done.

We’ve promised to take Mom’s dog to the dog park with the kids, we’ve got a whole bunch of cleaning that needs to be done by 3 PM on Monday, plus we still have to get some grocery shopping done before we burn through the rest of this money! And just when we feel like it’s all going to be over, school starts again and the week gets crazy. Now, as long as I can remember to do some of the more minor things that I really want to do (like carry my camera with me, because I’m missing so many great picture opportunities or get a cheese grater, because I’m desperately craving grated cheese on my food), I’ll be happy as a clam.

It’s been quite a long while, but I finally posted a video to YouTube… It’s not the best that I’ve ever done, but I was so desperate to post something that I no longer cared if it was perfect or still needed work. So freaking much has changed when it comes to uploading videos on there since I last did it, that the longest part of the whole thing for me was re-acquainting myself with the whole thing. Uploading videos on YouTube is so much cooler now than it was the last time I did it. You’re dying to know what I put up, aren’t you? Okay… I’ll show you!

Like the description of the video says, I haven’t been playing the electric keyboards that long and I am 100% teaching myself, so it’s not the best that it can be but it’s the best that I can do at the moment. One day, I will get a guitar and you won’t hear me complain anymore 😉

In other news, I spent the entire day on Minecraft, even though I had absolutely not intended to. And the second I got off, The Boyfriend got on. But, I am creating something that I keep starting and then re-starting and then re-starting some more and finally for the first time since this journey has started, I’m finally getting to the point where I’m quite excited and happy with what I’ve got. So excited in fact that I’m totally going to invite you along with me on this nerdy journey…

Since I began playing Minecraft, I’ve always been most intrigued by the concept of building a massive city – a metropolis, if you will. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what I was going to call it. I played with “ValerieVille“, “MommyLand” and a few others, but nothing was fitting right. Then, I just decided screw the name, I’m just going to start building the thing and then maybe a name will come to me that is suitable.

Construction began and The Boyfriend and I both worked hard trying to figure out redstone and minecart systems so that I could make a functionining train station in the center of my superflat world map and in creative mode. However, once we had completed the train tracks heading to the north, south, east and west, we realized that we had made a few errors and done a few things that needed to be cahnged to get them the way that I really wanted them. And it kept happening. I believe I’ve restarted this at least 3 times now.

But today, being incredibly inspired by all the Minecraft Tutorials I stayed up late watching last night, I jumped back on and began construction on my new mega city and now would like to show you some of the wickedness that is:

Valerieopolis Central Station

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The above images are some of the projects that I’m currently working on in my metropolis. Right in the center of the map is Valerieopolis Central Station, which will have trains leading out to the north, south, east and west and then diagonally (although not perfectly, because you can’t do that in Minecraft) out to the corners. Here’s a basic drawing of the whole concept:

Valerieopolis – Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition

The yellow lines mark what will be the minecart or train system and highways. The circles represent a transfer station, which I’m hoping to figure out how to do eventually. I’ve been watching some tutorials, but it’s taking a lot of time for me to get the hang of all this stuff. So far, the only thing that I’ve gotten to work successfully for me and it took me over 3 hours to figure out is the Fully Functioning Ticket Booth (seen in the slideshow above). This is the tutorial that I watched to figure it out, although as you see, my circuitry is a little different and I’m still having a hard time figuring out exactly how to make it work over and over again for me, instead of just once…

If you’d like to learn more about this map and what I’m hoping to do with it, I’ve started a Google Doc dedicated to ideas for my mega city. I’ve opened up the comments on the document and everything so that you can leave me any suggestions, advice or ideas if you’d really like to jump on this nerdy journey with me 😉 It’ll be an ever-changing, ever-growing, crazy list of things to do…

“Aww my man is so sweet! I was craving listening to The Puppini Sisters, but our stereo was set up in the wrong spot, so he moved it first thing this morning for me. Stopped all my complaining dead in it’s tracks ;)”

August 19th, 2012:

“What a crazy day today. Made a wicked dinner, which included Cheddar Havarti Mashed Potatoes (thank you very much Cahlen), then taught Kaeidyn how to shave her legs so that she’d stop plucking all her hair out with tweezers and finally, used a freezie to make Carter feel better after he slammed his little man between the toilet lid and seat…

Is it bedtime yet?!?”

August 18th, 2012:

“They need to make a blow dryer that is completely silent so that I don’t wake anyone up blow drying my long ass hair… It’s the only way to brush it easily after washing it now…”

August 17th, 2012:

“So excited that we’re going shopping today. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to get groceries in my entire life! Kids have gone out to watch The Lorax and Carter is resting on the bed, so now it’s time for me to power clean my house and see if I can’t get another load of laundry done. It takes so long…”

August 16th, 2012:

“It only took about 8 years, but one of my kids finally had to go in to get stitches. Carter’s now got 2 of them on his head…”

August 15th, 2012:

“Hate that The Boyfriend has to go to work tonight, because I would so much rather just sit and cuddle and watch MI-5. Going to be a long night…”

August 14th, 2012:

“Well, made all my phonecalls that I needed to make today. Gotta get another load of dishes and laundry done and then going out with my Mom for a little bit and then I get to come home and put my feet up, feeling very accomplished! Off I go, hi ho hi ho!”

August 13th, 2012:

“It only took forever and a day, but I am finally back online and super happy to be back!!”

I’m handling all much better this time than I ever have before. But I think it’s because I’m seriously starting to set goals for myself where all of it is concerned. Not for my personal blog as much as for Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous. I’ve just been working really hard on that one lately. Especially since The Boyfriend has promised that no matter what, by June, I get to upgrade the site. I’m incredibly excited about that.

I’m most looking forward to being able to allow users to upload their own videos, because right now they can only share off of other sites like YouTube and Vimeo. But with the upgrade, they’ll be able to upload straight from their own computers. And I’m hoping that will fill up the Video Blogs category (the only still-empty category…).

There’s also been a decrease in the length of time between new members signing up, which is really promising. But also means that I need to jump on that upgrade sooner rather than later as I’m nearing my member limit. I’ve got 13 spots open and I expect by June for them to all be full. Not that it really matters, because none of these members are participating yet… But I think there might be something wrong with confirmation emails or something, so I’ve been working on getting that cleared up.

I’ve even started looking into ways to monetize my blog(s), but I’m not really putting much hope or dedication into that right now. I mean, if I earn a couple dollars, great, but I’m not shooting for much right now. Like I said, my dedications and priorities lie elsewhere right now. Maybe in a few months, after I’ve upgraded Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous and after I ultimately decide what I’m doing with this blog*, maybe then I’ll start putting more effort into it. Who knows…

* For those of you who follow me on Facebook, you may have seen this update:

I’ve been sort of kind of thinking about changing this whole thing. I haven’t quite figured out how or to what yet. But an acquaintance of mine has offered to help me out with some things and I’ve thought about changing some things for awhile, so it’s kind of on my mind. I’d like to make this the spot that you can come to learn everything that you ever wanted to about lil ole me and then some. I just don’t know what, at that point, I’d want to do other than what I’m already doing…

Well, I could go on about this all day, in my rambly sort of way, but I have things to do, people to see, places to be. Okay… It’s just my Mom, but still! Cheers!

I just realized today that I haven’t even been on there in a few weeks. The Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous Fan Page, I’ve visited every day this week and updated it a couple times, but my personal fan page has been left untouched since December!! Not very happy with this little detail.

My big plan was that I was going to post all my around-the-web activity to this page and I’m apparently doing an incredibly shitty job! I’m a little disappointed, but not very surprised. But it’s officially a goal now to reverse that! It’s almost retarded how many online-related goals I have at the moment.

From upping the ante on most of my social networks, the large focuses being Facebook, Twitter and Google+, to expanding and upgrading Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous to blogging more often here on The Rantings, I’ve got my blog-a-holic hands full! It’s quite exciting and I love that when I sit in front of my computer, I’m inspired and motivated and flowing with creative juices. It’s exciting and I feel really good about this year in blogging.

I’d really like to see my Facebook Fan Page become some sort of useful resource for the stuff that I find interesting as well as a hubspot for updates on all the things I’m working on around-the-web, such as blog posts from everywhere, forums I’m participating in, pictures I’m sharing and tons more. So if you haven’t become a fan yet, head on over and check it out, and be prepared for much more activity in the coming weeks.

In other news…

The Boyfriend and I are still technically fighting over the cellphone incident, though you’d probably never be able to tell. I finally confronted him about the whole issue, which backfired miserably. My heart was racing so hard as I said, “So, how long are we going to avoid this conversation?”, to which he snickered. I went from smiling and half-joking to being completely serious all because of that little snicker.

I asked straight out what he was deleting off his phone. “A Strip Poker App”, huge sigh of relief from me. That was until I started thinking about it a lot more, especially after his reaction to the entire conversation last night, and now I’m convinced a strip poker app is his own coded version of something much worse, because why the hell would you try to hide that?!? I kept saying essentially the same things over and over again in my little rant to him. It’s not the app I’m upset about, it’s the hiding of the app, the awkward weekend because of being too chicken shit to talk about it.

The situation could’ve been handled so differently. Instead of deleting it, he could’ve shown me it shortly after he downloaded it in more of a joking matter, one that I couldn’t get mad at. “Look at this funny app I just downloaded?”. I probably would’ve laughed about it, I probably would’ve asked to play, and there’s only a slim chance that I would actually get mad about it. It’s not like you can consider something like that to be porn exactly. You don’t have to work that hard for porn, there’s no having to know how to play poker to watch porn!!

Instead he made it seem like a dirty, shameful secret and that’s the whole issue that I have with it. There are a hundred people who will tell you that I’m the most sexually-accepting person in the world! I don’t understand why it’s so hard for boyfriends to respect that and just share that part of their sexuality with me. I’m not saying that I want to be there every time they watch porn, though I think it would be a lot more fun if I was, I’d at least like for it to be treated like it’s normal. I’d like when I found out, they didn’t lie and honestly, I would love if a guy was just honest about it from the very get go. “Oh hey, by the way, I watched some porn earlier today. Just thought you should know!”.

I’m not saying that would solve the whole issue, but it would help. I wouldn’t feel like they were sneaking around behind my back to do something that they know is going to upset me. That just feels vindictive and mean. Anyways, the conversation ended with me saying what I needed to say about the situation, which is basically all of what I just said, and then… It was silence for the rest of the night. I rolled over to my side of the bed, he rolled over to his, we didn’t say a single thing to each other and each of us fell asleep. I was completely convinced that he musn’t have heard anything I said, and today, I’m pretty sure that’s true.

I spent all day at work today, beyond angry at him. It was a boring day at work, so I sat with my notebook writing non-stop about the situation. Somewhere around the 3rd or 4th entry, I started thinking that breaking up was a really great option – all over a stupid cellphone app! I seriously considered “grounding” him off his cellphone to teach him a lesson, then it changed to every electronic device unless I was present and by the time I left work, all I could think about was my anger towards him. It had consumed me completely.

Then, yet again, the same as the last time we fought, I decided I wasn’t enjoying the awkwardness of the whole situation, so guess whose given in like a bitch? That’s right, I have. I even said to him, “I was planning on being so much meaner to you today…”. I hate that he’s completely the one in the wrong in this situation and I feel like I’m apologizing. And last night after I voiced my opinion, I felt like I was the one being punished for my actions. I just don’t get it…

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